The Girl Who Lived
by apoisonberry
Summary: Rumors once spread through Westeros about the birth and sudden death of Cersei Lannister and Robert Baratheon's first born child. Every one of them was wrong. The rightful heir to the iron throne has returned to Westeros.
1. Cerah

** Cerah **

Nearly a league south of Castle Black, stood Cerah. Her lips were tinted blue and icicles hung from her hair but she tried her hardest to trudge through the growing mass of snow. She needed to reach the wall within the day and the sun was falling quickly toward the western horizon. Never in her life had she been this cold.

She came to a halt, watching a herd of elk eat pine needles from the forest's trees, envious. _I'm so weak compared to them, _she thought. _They're built for this. I'm made of the south and of the sea. _

That's when she heard the horn. She froze, every hair on her frozen body raised. _Wildlings? No. _Weeks ago she received a raven with news that their company had been eliminated.

Deep within her southern soul she found the courage to move. She was halfway up the tree before her senses returned to her. Without the forest to block her vision, she could see all the way to the wall. It was taller than she had ever imagined, the top seemed to disappear into the clouds. She was close, too. Another hour, maybe two and she would be at Castle Black's doorstep.

She scanned the land for the horn's source with no luck. _Did I imagine it? Maybe the isolation has finally taken hold. _Her eyes trailed down to the elk. They didn't seem to notice the sound. She released a long breath and let her eyes close.

The world was changed when they opened again. The herd had dispersed, running for their lives in all directions. A sound plagued with death erupted from where they had been grazing. The largest of the pack was lying on his side panting, coloring the snow red. An arrow skewered his neck.

Within seconds a large group of men were crowed around the body, all on horseback.

Cerah yanked an arrow from it's quiver and strung her bow with staggering speed.

"What'd you do that for?" a short plump man complained.

"I dunno, seemed like the right thing t'do. Did you hear the way he screeched? Ha!" laughed the archer. He unsheathed his sword and drove it through the elk's skull. "Let's cook it up, I'm hungry."

"Are you some kind of half-wit? You know we don't have enough time for that!" cried another man, "If we don't do the deed soon, someone else might. And were almost there. Think of all the ale and cheese and warmth we'll have when we take the Castle!"

"Aye!" the rest of the men cheered.

Cerah's mind was racing. The men bore no sigil. Sellswords, she assumed. _But why would men of Westeros want Castle Black to fall? _

"Can't we just rest a bit?" complained the archer man, "We can attack at nightfall when everyone's sleeping."

There was chatter amongst the group, too quiet for Cerah to hear. Minutes later the men began to dismount. They would stay here, for a few hours at least.

Cerah surveyed her surroundings once again. She was far enough from the group that she might be able to slip out of the tree and away before anyone noticed. But even if she did, there was still another hour of open land to travel through. If she couldn't make it before the men rode for the wall, she would be helpless.

Staying here wasn't an option. It would only be a matter of time before one of the men decided to look up and she wasn't well hidden. She considered trying to take them all on from the tree. If she took out the archer first, they would be defenseless. No one else had a bow and it was unlikely another man could reach her before she shot him. She counted the men and the arrows in her quiver. Nine arrows for thirteen men. The odds were against her.

She looked toward the wall, towering what seemed like a league high. Her best bet would be to head strait toward it's base and hide under it's cover for the rest of the journey west. Seconds later she was on the ground and running, quiet as a ghost.

They were coming. This time they weren't daft enough to warn her with a horn, but she could feel their horses hoofs shaking the earth. It was an hour since the gods swallowed the sun back up and she didn't know how much further she had to travel. She could see the Castle's silhouette and the elevator lying eerily distance but her depth perception was useless in this light. There was no moon tonight.

All she could do was run and hope she reached the entrance before they did, but she was beginning to loose hope. The hoofs grew louder and louder until Cerah was sure they would trample right over her. She kept running until the sound stopped. The starlight reflecting off the snow made it so she could see their shadows in the distance. They dismounted, gathering the things they'd need for battle. The smallest of the men was told to stay with the horses.

Cerah lowered herself to the ground, hoping they wouldn't notice her green cloak against the snow in the darkness. She held her breath. He right hand clung to her sword's hilt. Once the men began their decent, she got to her feet again and began trailing behind them. Every once in a while, one of the group would look backwards and Cerah would slowly come to a halt, slinking back into her cloak.

_Like a shadow_, Cerah thought._ I'm only a shadow_.

Soon enough the group stood within the Castle's grounds, near the stables. There were a few men of the Night's Watch tending to evening chores. The sellswords easily overwhelmed them.

Cerah had found shelter behind a grain shed. _I have to do something. The Night's Watch will never respect me if I sit here while their brothers are killed. _She scanned the yard, desperately trying to form plan.

Cerah counted her arrows and tightened her belt before she started running. She leaped onto a pile of hay and from that to the roof of what seemed to be a barn. Under her feet, horses kicked at their stalls.

She strung her bow and pulled the it's string back to touch her lips, peering strait down the arrow. She let her eyes fall shut and a long breath escape her lungs. Her mind calmed down a bit. Fighting, for a righteous cause, was where she belonged. _Twelve to one, _she thought. _I guess it could be worse._

Then things started happening very quickly.

"Ey!" she screamed, hoping to draw the attention away from the castle and to wake someone of the Night's Watch. All twelve sellswords looked her way. The archer reached for his bow, but Cerah's arrow was already racing toward his face. It stuck him right between the eyes and he fell. She took out four more men and used all but one of her arrows before they reached her.

Her sword hissed as it left the sheath. She took a running jump over then men's heads. The battle high kicked in before she reached the ground. Her plan was not to fight, but to run inside the Castle to better cover or to where someone would hopefully come to her aid. She was very fast.

She made it halfway across the courtyard before she saw the arrow poking through her right shoulder. One of the sellswords had picked up the archer's bow and was standing in the doorway. He smiled.

She reached him soon enough and drove her sword through his throat. Inside the Castle she could hear commotion in nearby rooms, but no one was there to save her yet.

She turned to fight, driving the remaining attackers back into the yard. She sliced through two and a half more men before a swords blow sent her flying toward the ground. Her consciousness was slipping away from her. Four men towered over her, one with his sword to her throat.

"Who are you?!" a man screeched, there was fear in his words.

She studied their faces. They were old, each with his own gray hair and bushy beard. These were the kind of men you'd expect to find at a tavern, drinking over chatter of women and the seasons. The wrinkles of their faces told stories of happiness and tourneys and long summers. She could trace their laugh lines with a finger if she wanted. Sellswords had much harder faces. These were men of Kings Landing.

Desperately, she reached for her sword but the pain from the arrow made moving excruciating. Her mind was too slow to reason her way out of this.

Luckily, she didn't have to. The men fell, almost in unison.

Her body was too weak to look for her saviors. She heard voices and the sound of feet. She could feel the warmth radiating off the bodies that had surrounded her. One man frantically screamed a familiar question, "Who are you?" Cerah smiled. The figure's face was only a blur to her but she knew he was a man of the Night's Watch.

"Cerah... Cerah Baratheon," escaped her lips before her body went limp.


	2. Jon

**Jon**

"The book you wanted, sir."

Lord Commander Jon Snow looked up, awakened from his trance. Sleep was scarce over the past days. Samwell Tarly stood in the doorway, his chubby fingers wrapped around a copy of _The Lineage and Histories of the Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms_.

"Sam, don't call me sir. It makes me feel uncomfortable," Jon spoke softly.

"Right," Sam bit his lip and waddled over, holding the book out for Jon. "The book you wanted, _m'Lord_," he teased with a chuckle.

Jon didn't have the energy to retort, "thanks, Sam." He took the book and set it on the table next to his half eaten venison and oats. On a bed beside him laid the mysterious girl who came to their rescue two nights ago.

"Will she be all right?" Sam asked, nervously.

Jon studied the girls body, same as he'd been doing for the past hours. Maester Aemon had dressed her wounds. They were able to remove the arrow from her shoulder without much trouble, but the sword blow she took to her side was a bit trickier. Her skin was blue and broken ribs were suspected. Fortunately, the fever she had been fighting was starting to recede and the Maester said that if it continued, she'd most likely pull through.

"Maester Aemon thinks so," Jon replied as he stood up to walk over the the bed. He brushed the girls long black hair from her face and touched her cheek. It seemed to be a normal temperature. The girl twitched and mumbled something inaudible. She had been in and out of sleep every few hours. Each time Jon hoped she would give them some clue as to who she was or why she was here, but Maester Aemon had been giving her milk of the poppy and most of her words made no sense.

Jon thought back to the last useful thing she said. She claimed her name was Cerah Baratheon, but he had never heard of her before in all his studies of the Seven Kingdoms. The only lead he had was something Ser Janos Slynt said. He told Jon of a rumor that once spread through the Seven Kingdoms. Not long after Robert Baratheon settled into his throne and married Cersei Lannister, the Queen bore a child. Twins, a girl and a boy, just like her and her brother Jamie. The capitol celebrated the birth of the healthy prince and princess but three days later tragedy struck: the new born girl died suddenly. The Grand Maester said it was a blood problem, a common thing amongst twins, and there was nothing they could have done to prevent it. Janos recalled outrage in the city. No one was allowed to look upon the child's body or attend the funeral.

The city, like any other event, quickly forgot. And life went on. Janos added that the boy died of a fever at age three. Rumor had it that Cersei grew with child before her wedding day. A birth cursed by the Gods, they said.

Jon settled back into his chair and opened the book, flipping through it until he found the pages with the great stag printed on them. He scrolled through the lines and lines of Baratheon lineage until he found the most recent generation. The twin's birth was sandwiched in between Renly's and Joffery's.

"What's it say?" Sam inquired, sitting himself next to Jon.

"Two twins are born on this day," Jon traced the line with his finger. "The boy is given the name Tristan. The girl, a still born, is not named and buried in the Baratheon crypt with her ancestors. Tristan dies of a winter flu during his third year."

There was a knock at the door. "Curious story, Lord Snow. Very curious," Master Aemon commented.

"It's settled then. She's not a Baratheon as she claims to be, right?"

The Maester moved to the girl's bedside and began fiddling with medicine vials and bandages. "Perhaps. But we must also remember how all words are just stories, easily exaggerated, often forged. What we observe with our eyes are the only truths we have."

Jon watched as he tended to each of her bandages. She certainly looked like she was Baratheon and Lannister. The child spoke of in the book would be about seventeen now and that's exactly how old this girl looked. Her hair was dark Baratheon brown, reaching halfway down her back. Jon thought back to last year when the royal family had visited Winterfell. This girl's body was tall and thin, like Cersei Lannister's. Her eyes were Lannister green and her cheekbones were well defined. She looked impeccably like a member of their royal family.

The only difference were her scars. The injuries she obtained defending the Night's Watch were not her first. All over her body small blemishes were etched into her skin. The most impressive was on her back, where a dark pink scar stretched from her neck to her hip. Royal ladies were taught to hold needles, not swords.

It remained a mystery.

"I think I need some air. Send for me if she wakes up," Jon grabbed his black, fur lined coat that hung by the door. "And don't give her anymore milk of the poppy."

Maester Aemon nodded, respectfully.

There was little light tonight. Only a slice of the moon could been seen through the clouds. The wind howled, sending snow flying through the air. Winter was truly here. The men of the Night's Watch had not seen a snow this high in years, the older brothers said. Three foot tall dunes brushed up against the Wall. They seemed like nothing to the wall's greatness, but to Jon they proved difficult. A path had been cleared that lined the main castle grounds together, but snow was starting to build up on those too. Jon followed the path to the stables. He climbed up on top of the stable where he first saw Cerah. Peering down, his mind replayed what little of the fight he witnessed. One moment the girl was leaping through the air, the next seven men were dead. Never in his life had he seen someone with such a skill.

Nothing made sense.

Jon had prevented his mind from wandering back to the attackers. He still needed to figure out who they were and what they wanted. He like the idea that they were just common thieves, but there was no reasoning in that. Common thieves attack taverns. Men who venture north to the wall come with a purpose.

His greatest hope was that Cerah knew the truth.

A layer of snow had collected on Jon by the time Sam came stumbling up.

Sam hunched over, gasping for air, "Its... it's the girl. Shes...s-ss-shes woken up."


End file.
